Sept. 4-5th: Katoomba

This past weekend started on Friday night. Ryan, Makenna, and I had nothing to do so we started to watch Stranger Things on Netflix. We all immediately got hooked and stayed up until 11 p.m. watching it. After we were done I still had to pack for my trip to Katoomba the very next day. When all is said and done I wasn't in bed until 1200 and due to noisy neighbors I didn't fall asleep until 1 am.

Saturday September 3rd

Ryan and I woke up at 5:45 a.m. and caught the 6:42 a.m. train to Central Station in Sydney. As soon as our train pulled in we ran all the way from downstairs at Platform 25 to Platform 7 to catch the very next train to Katoomba. Luckily we made it and arrived with no troubles.


We got to Katoomba and Ryan dropped some of his bags off at our hostel and we headed off for ---lunch. It felt like 1 pm but it was only about 10:50 p.m. We went into a kebab restaurant and got snack packs for lunch/breakfast. After our meal we went out to the Echo Lookout to see the Three Sisters.  We walked to the lookout point and it was so windy that it was a little uncomfortable to walk under the power lines.

After admiring the view and the extremely strong winds we found a trail to Leura Cascades and headed off that way. The trail was very muddy, but it sort of felt like we were in a rain forest at some points.

The view from Echo Point...again.

The Three Sisters.....again.

A short video I took at Echo Point

A muddy section of our trail.

A large rock wall that was on our hike. It was actually pretty cool, but I am just unsure of how to describe it.

A random waterfall we encountered

Leura Cascade

So this is Leura Cascade also but it is what leads down to the photo below

After admiring the falls we took another trail back that walked along the valley floor. This trail was weird because in the trail we encountered the base of another waterfall, extremely steep stairs, trails that were up against the cliff with a big drop, parts that felt like a temperate forest, and more rainforesty sections. It was a very  fun hike that included multiple waterfalls and really pretty plants.

Eventually, Leura Cascade leads to this big waterfall. We were lucky because our hike lead us to the bottom of it!

Here is a photo of it in color, but I prefer the black and white photos.

Some of the trails felt like a line at Disneyland. Having a metal bar on one side guiding me down a path with a rock feature on the other side.

Some of the trails included ladders and stairways

We encountered so many different waterfalls along the way and I am unsure if I have every seen so many in one day.

Just some moss on a log

We walked along the floor for quite a while and ended up walking around the Three Sisters (we couldn't see them though because of tree coverage) and ended up in a place called Scenic World. Now, we were told to do this hike by a guy at an info booth and he said scenic world is cool because we can walk around on the boardwalk for and take a really steep train back to the top of the cliffs for about $20. We walked around on the boardwalk and there was nothing there! It was a complete tourist trap!! The boardwalk just walked through more of the bush which is something we had been doing for the past 10 miles or so! We turned around after a while because we thought we were wasting our time.

We did not want to spend $20 for less than a minute train ride back to the top so we took a trail up to the top called The Furber Steps and these steps destroyed us. They were steep and they just kept going up and up and up!! We were so exhausted, but there was no other way up. We stopped and admired a look out point right by Katoomba Falls (another large waterfall), but didn't stop to take photos because we just needed to get back before dark.

View from Furber Steps.

This is the lookout we were at at Katoomba Falls but this was probably the top third of the falls. The rest went over the side of the cliff.

I tried to upload a video of us hiking up to stairs to sow them and how exhausted we were, but the file is too big! So, below is a photo of one of the many sections of stairs.

When we got back to the top we were so exhausted and we still had to walk about another half mile into town to find food. We found a Domino's and got three pizzas for the two of us for $15 which we were pretty excited about how cheap it was. We were so tired that we could have slept right there in that dirty Katoomba Domino's.

We walked back to the hostel, hung out for a little bit and were fighting to stay awake although it was only about 7 pm. I convinced Ryan to go to a bar down the road and we sat there and had two beers each and hung out for a little then went back at 9.


Sunday September 5th

We woke up and grabbed some muffins and power bars as well as some pizza roll type things for lunch at the grocery store and had them for breakfast. We had a trip booked to go to the Jenolan Caves and as Ryan was using the restroom I got a call telling me that the tour was leaving in the matter of minutes. Luckily the pickup spot was right up the road, but we ran as fast as we could there. We hopped on a large bus that had about 50 seats, even though there was only about ten of us total, and headed off to the caves.

The ride there was actually really exciting because the road to the caves is a one way road headed to the caves from 1145-145. Going on an extremely windy road in a large coach was actually pretty thrilling. We were watching how close we would get to the side of the cliff. Luckily our bus driver was pretty good at his job.

As we drove up to the caves we both decided how the entrance looked like a Bond Villain cave.

This is the entrance to the caves. I felt like Blofeld or Goldfinger had some men hiding behind the rocks waiting to ambush the bus.

The road through the cave.

 Once you drove through that large cave there was a hotel and the caves tour office on the other side. It all had a villainous hideout vibe to it.

We had time to kill before our tour so we walked back into the large cave and walked around and took some shots of it.

Looking up at the side of some stalagmites and stalactites. 

A shot of the ceiling....just 'cause.

After walking in front of the cave we walked to the top of it and found an archway.

We climbed to the top of the arch and this is a shot looking from the top.

When it was time for our tour we were lead to a large metal down and once inside it felt like were were infiltrating the villain's lair. Believe me, I know how geeky this sounds, but that's what I was imagining.

We went into the Orient Cave (evidently there are multiple caves that you can tour here and we did The Orient Cave) and went in many different chambers. If I am right we went into the Persia Chamber, India Chamber, and the Egypt Chamber.

In each of the different chambers the guide would turn on the lights as we went. I was in front of the tour so I would stop at some point because it would be pitch black and I would stop because I didn't want to go any further without lights. In this photo above the stairway lead down into a pit so you could look up. Ryan and I were the last people to go down and we were alone down there taking photos. Right as Ryan said "We should probably start heading back up" The lights turned off on us! The guide thought everyone had come back up from the bottom and turned the lights off. We threw our cameras over our shoulders and started to get back up the ladder. The lights turned on a couple seconds later because someone told the guide we were down there luckily.

View from bottom of the stairs

View of some of the stairs we had to climb up and down.

This is a video of us coming back through the cave because the tour was over. The part where I turn the camera around it was a very tight squeeze for me! The video is dark at first but near to end you can see the Indian Chamber

Here's a photo of the villain cave if it wasn't clear in the video.

After our tour we went by the cafe and since they were closing we got lunch for the two of us for only $5! Score! Then hopped back on the bus.

This bus ride was more thrilling than the first because on our way up we ran into multiple cars coming the mountain and got to watch them backup on a one-way road with a cliff on one side. Everyone had to move for the bus because it was so big that it wouldn't be able to back up.  At one point we watched two cars barely squeeze by us and the barrier! 

Once we got back to Katoomba we hopped on the first train to Sydney. Once back in Central Station in Sydney we ran to catch our train on Platform 25 but just barely missed it and had to wait an hour, which wasn't too bad.